Excursions

When I'm not busy doing homework, I've got plenty of opportunities to get a taste of local and Russian culture. Here's a list of my activities thus far.

Concert - A local orchestra played a free concert at the Philharmonic, located on the main plaza. From what I remember they played a few impressive pieces by Mikhail Glinka.

Concert - This same orchestra was joined by various opera singers known around Russia to perform pieces from various operas. I'm not crazy about opera, but it was interesting nonetheless.

Concert - A local group played jazz renditions of traditional Russian songs, as well as a couple Western classics, including a Russian translation of Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive."

Theatre - A children's puppet show. I guess I should have been listening when they explained that it was a children's show, but we went as a group so it wasn't too weird. It's noteworthy that the puppets were human-sized. The show itself was a re-telling of a folktale written by Pushkin.

Theatre - An adults' puppet show, although there were more children there than adults. More thematically and emotionally heavy, and the puppets were very small. It wasn't a puppet show with a puppet-stage - it's an artist who stands on stage and plays with his puppets and makes a story out of it. I think we're returning, so I'll take pictures next time.

Extreme park - Outdoor park outside of the city. Paintball. Rock climbing. Obstacle course up in the trees.

Dacha - Hanging out with Americans and Russians out in the country side, staying overnight in cabins we rented. Mosquitos, flies, vodka, unfiltered local beer, and lots of pickled food.

Sauna - We have a sauna in our house, it's cool. You go in, get really sweaty and hot, and when you start losing your breath, you leave the sauna and jump in the pool. Then you go back in. After a couple times you're good to go, and the rest of the night you have a nice high to relax on.

Beer factory - See earlier post.

Candy factory - Like the beer factory excursion, except less interesting and less tasty.

Artist Studio - We visited a local artist's studio, located on the top floor of an apartment building. A nice view while he showed us his paintings and talked a lot. His style varied from impressionist to abstract, and it was cool to hear him talk about his life and his work and see how it all fit together.

Museum of Slavic Mythology - An art gallery of contemporary artists' paintings portraying gods and legends from pre-Christian Slavic culture. Also an attempt to rip off tourists with over-priced matryoshkas.

Tomskaya Pisanitsa - The park/nature place we went to after our excursion to Kemerovo. A woodsy area with old huts that display inside the way Russian people, as well as other local ethnic groups, used to live (or still live) Artifacts and things like that. There was also a mini-zoo, but now's not the time to comment on animal rights.

I have about three weeks left - time has gone too fast. Much more to come!